In sports, we like our team names short and sweet: Cuse, Orange, Bama, Carolina, Yanks, Sox, Bills, Saints and Cards, as opposed to the Institute of Technology at Syracuse Central High School. It's a bit wordy, no?

It sure won't fit on a football jersey, either. The school's undefeated football team simply has "TECH" on the front of their jerseys and a red "T" on their blue helmets.

Wouldn't Tech be a bit easier on everyone? Or even, Syracuse Tech?

Tech seems like a unique brand possibility here in Syracuse. Sounds cool (and looks cool on the jerseys), too. As the relatively new city high school continues to grow in the sports conversation, perhaps its students and school community will settle upon a comfortable designation for how it refers to its athletics teams.

Maybe they already have.

The school uses ITC a good bit. Does that work? It works just fine for a couple of colleges upstate in RPI and RIT. But then, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has developed a pretty good brand name as Virginia Tech.

ITC is in its seventh year of operation and is the fifth public high school in the Syracuse City School District. The others are Corcoran, Fowler, Henninger and Nottingham. ITC is located in the shadow of Downtown Syracuse behind the old Syracuse Central High School building on Salina Street. The official name of the high school was adopted by the Syracuse City School District board of education.

This is the fourth year for the varsity football program at ITC under head coach John Cosgrove. The Eagles are 4-0 and host Canastota Friday night at Meachem Field. It's The Post-Standard's and Syracuse.com's Game of the Week, a designation driven by a grass roots voting campaign staged by ITC students. The weekly online vote for game of the week drew more than 61,000 total votes. More than half went to the ITC-Canastota game.